Of Stars and Wolf
by Kepouros
Summary: "What the hell is wrong with you, lady?" Stan asked cautiously. "I'd tell you," she bit out, "But you'll find out in about two minutes, anyway. Now, do you have a cage?" That was when Stan noticed her fingernails were visibly growing. *** In which a reluctant werewolf seeks a cure from our favorite Grunkles, and finds danger, adventure... and love.
1. Chapter 1

The night's ambient sounds are swallowed by the eerie, lonesome howl coming from the Mystery Shack. It is long, rising in a steady pitch from beginning to zenith, before falling off into silence.

Within the shack's walls, Stan growled and lurched up from his easy chair to bang on the vending machine. "Hey! Keep it down, down there! Ducktective is on!"

Within seconds, the vending machine door to the basement opened and revealed Ford, journal in hand, glare on his face, and cotton in his ears. "WHAT?" he yelled.

Stan plucked a wad of cotton from his brother's ear and repeats. "I said, keep it to a dull roar! I'm tryin' ta watch TV."

Ford winced as the howl's beginning pitch sounds, and quickly shut the vending machine. "I can't stop her any more than she can control it, Stanley," he huffed. "And you're distracting the science by complaining every three minutes!"

Stan gave an unwilling grunt. "Fine," he said, wandering back to his chair. "The freakin' howls are killing me, though! It's the third night in a row!"

Ford sighed. "They're different this month," he mused, glancing over his shoulder. "They mean something, I just know it," he said.

"Yeah, they do! They mean, 'I'm an annoying puppy that needs a newspaper to the ass!'"

The terse, annoyed face of the studious brother gave way to a slightly humored expression. "You bring that up tomorrow morning, she might be game."

Grumpily, Stan waved dismissively. "The way she's carrying on, ruining my beauty sleep," he groused, "She'll be lucky to even get a rise outta me."

"Stanley, can't you hear her? Can't you tell that she's trying to say something?"

Stan's jaw clenched momentarily. He slept through the usual fare like crickets chirping. These howls weren't the usual fare, he knew. He didn't have to be a nerd like his brother to figure that out. The way the sounds tonight tugged at his curmudgeonly heart made him uncomfortable.

He wished morning would break, already.

"Here," Ford said, holding out two more wads of cotton. "Watch it with subtitles."

"This had better be worth it," groaned Stan.

"If we can help her," Ford replied from the basement door, "And dodge this prophecy in the process...it definitely will be."


	2. Chapter 2

Stanley Pines had lived in the trouble-prone town of Gravity Falls for several decades now. As such, he'd learned to moderate his exposure: keep cursed items under lock and key, don't read Latin aloud, and maintain friendly distance with magical creatures (even the cute ones). In this way, trouble was kept at bay.

He'd never had it knock on his front door, though.

"Go away," he barked from the armchair. "We're closed!"

There was a pause, then a more persistent pounding.

Stan squinted at the door and quietly withdrew his baseball bat from under the armchair. Stalking closer on slippered feet, he cautiously peered through grimy peephole. He could tell it was a woman, middle-aged and ragged. But at nearly midnight? She was slumping against the porch column and hugging herself as though trying to keep from flying apart.

"Please open the door," she pleaded. "I need help!"

Stan hesitated. He reasoned that if she were a monster intent on eating him, she'd have broken down the door when he first yelled.

"What the hell do you want, lady?" snapped Stan through the door.

A groan came from the woman on the other side of the wood, and she sagged to the porch. "Damn it, Stanley Pines! People are in danger if you don't open the door!"

That was enough for Stanley to ease the door open to the length of its chain. "What are you talking about? And how do you know my name?"

The woman was sweating profusely, something the peephole had failed to show. She looked violently ill, and was staring up at him with fever-bright eyes. If she didn't look like a strung-out meth addict, he might have found her an attractive forty-something. "I'll explain later, I swear," she managed. "But right now I need - " She was cut off by what sounded like a wet, boney _pop!_ from somewhere along her spine, prompting dissolution into a pained groan.

"What the hell is wrong with you, lady?" Stan asked cautiously. This _reeked_ of Gravity Falls' distinct brand of trouble, and he wanted no part.

A sharp, bitter laugh (or was it a bark?) exploded from her. "I'd tell you," she bit out, "But you'll find out in about two minutes, anyway. _Now, do you have a cage?"_

Stanley was stunned by the way her voice garbled, as though she were possessed, and didn't answer immediately.

Another spinal _pop!_ sent her lurching into his personal space, slamming her palm to the doorframe in the process. "A cage!" she strained. "Do you have one?!" Feral eyes peered through the lank curtain of hair, one nearly glowing as the moonlight caught it.

Stan's eyes slid to the hand on his doorframe, then widened at the sight of her unnaturally long, sharp fingernails denting the wood.

He made the call. Whatever was happening could happen with steel bars between them. "Yeah, I got one," he said, opening the door fully. He kept his hand on the baseball bat, though.

The woman staggered into the shack, practically vibrating. "Quickly," she whispered. "I'm running out of time."

That's when Stan noticed her ears were slanting into points.

Stan leapt at her, tucking her under one arm and gripping the bat tighter. "This way, in here," he urged.

The cage in question was occupied by a stuffed Sascrotch, but judging by the way the woman lunged inside when Stan cracked the door, he would not have time to remove it. "Lady, I don't even know your fuckin' name!" He groused as he slammed the door shut. "You've got some explaining to - "

A bassy, throaty growl emanated from the woman as she hunched in on herself. Her whole body convulsed suddenly, causing her to violently jostle the cage, rattling a nearby table with the only lantern lit in the room. It toppled and rolled across the surface, painting the walls and ceiling with grotesque, disfigured shadows.

The shadows could not compare with the terrifying thing being birthed in the cage.

The woman's lips retracted and strange scream escaped her as she plummeted to her knees. It sounded like two sets of vocal chords on the same lungs: one bestial, and the other agonized human. The scream exposed her teeth, which were lengthening and rearranging. They looked more like the tusks of a boar, and were fearsomely as long as his fingers, jammed and overpacking her mouth haphazardly as she gnashed in pain.

Stan reeled backwards, putting the baseball bat over his shoulder, swearing in shock.

The convulsion released its hold on the woman's spine and she collapsed to all fours, shouting in pain from her mangled mouth. Another one seized her in seconds, shooting her limbs into painfully taut straightness. Soon, wet snapping sounds increased the ferocity of her roars, and her joints popped into unnatural positions.

Her spine humped and stayed that way, muscles bowing and strapping her expanding skeleton. Her rear legs remained in a crouched position, as though naturally (unnaturally!) resting that way. Her arms lengthened and thickened. At their ends were claws like scythes, twice the size of the paws they sprung from.

"STANFORD!" shouted Stanley in the direction of the vending machine.

The strongest convulsion yet caused the woman's skin to change in a sickly wave. Her skin turned greasy black where not covered in dense, oily fur; leaving only the perpetual snarl of her snout and her feet.

Her eyes fixed him with a gaze fabricated from nightmares: sunken and luminously yellow, with no pupils. She growled at him menacingly, rattling from her chest to his like thunder, and the tuft of fur on the end of her ropey tail swished as though preparing to pounce.

"STANFORD!" Roared Stanley again, backing away from the cage with the bat over his shoulder. He nearly backed into his brother, who was rushing onto the scene with some sort of plasma axe at the ready.

"What the fuck, Stan?!" barked the scientist.

"How the hell should I know, Ford?!" retorted the mystery man. "She knocked on the door and asked if I had a cage and then _this!_ "

The woman - if she could be called such anymore - was vociferating in more and more of an animal fashion. In less than a minute of mute, horrified watching, the woman was gone, leaving in her place a large wolf monster standing over the fragments of her clothes. She snarled and bounced off the steel bars with a deafening BANG!, but the cage showed no sign of distress or weakening. She shook out her scruff disdainfully and began to pace like a caged tiger.

"Ford," murmured Stan, letting the bat fall to his side. "What is that thing?"

Ford, too, let his weapon drop. "I have never seen this before," he said, eyes locked on the beast in the cage.

The wolf suddenly turned on Sascrotch, ripping out its throat with her teeth and eviscerating it with her claws.

"HEY!" shouted Stan in dismay. "That's a valuable attraction!"

The wolf paid him no heed, and began to shred the taxidermied creature.

"Just what did you find, Stan?" muttered Ford.

Stan scoffed. "More like, what found us?"


End file.
